First, if anyone uses ridewithgps, let me follow you!
Today’s ride and my progress this year. I’ve been riding pretty seriously for about 2015. At one point I was working for a bike powered composting service, where I hitched a trailer to my bike and picked up food scraps from peoples homes to bring them to a site to get composted. I’d end up with 200+ lbs on my bike, at 14-20 miles, on my 26+ lb Surly!
Alas, for the past 5 years or so I’ve become more of a fair weather rider since I moved and it’s my rainier where I’m at. Couple with bouts of pretty intense depression and gaining 35 lbs, and I end up back at point A after I build up some muscle and a bit of endurance year after year. I also hate hills lol.
I went on my first bike camping trip a couple of weeks ago, and it was magical. I had no choice but to climb and climb and climb again; the Elevation wasn’t that wild but it was just challenging enough. Since then my love of riding has been renewed and I’m going to give myself the lofty goal of 1,000 miles by January. That will pan out to 914.8 miles after today, so close to 200 miles per month. We will see how that goes! I did ride some before I started tracking but I’m going to challenge myself and not count those miles…but now I gotta start recording every ride!
I firmly believe that setting far out goals and reaching for them is healthy and good way of challenging yourself. You got this. However, don’t dwell to much, focus on doing your best here and now and do not push if you feel any injury pain. The best results can only be achieved injury free, even if the result is far out of your target.
Thank you! Yeah I have been trying hard recently to manage my expectations and remind myself that it’s all for fun because I’m usually someone who’s easily disappointed by not reaching my goals. So far so good lol I’m stoked to see how far I can push myself and my ride distance too